fuck marry kill

[money]

FUCK, MARRY, KILL

welcome to GAME NIGHT at DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES. the game on the docket? FUCK, MARRY, KILL. the rules are simple: roll the game picker wheel three times or just pick three as you'd like, dropping the names in your header comment — icly we'll say they picked they names out of a hat. people respond, comment around, get into fist fights, kiss a little? thread hop and react as you see fit!
(meme threads can be considered canon!)

Comments

[sensive]

C’mon.

[ never have i ever shown hole (on the network) ]

I have, but I know you know. I mean, you know what I mean — unless. You’re, uh, teasing me? [ big smile. ] Because we’re friends.

[ 🥰 ]

[unfazeable]

Don't think it's a requirement, but yes. I'm teasing you.

[nothing on the friends bit. takes more than that. her smile is not as wide, but it exists.]

You don't like being popular?

[sensive]

[ on the road to friends! ]

I seem more popular than I am. That’s all. You got a skewed sample size ‘cause someone put my name in this hat extra.

[ why the hell else does he keep coming up. ]

[unfazeable]

Well, I suppose the one thing I did know about you was that you were the self-deprecating sort.

If you're going to insist, you'd better sell it better than that. Only kissed but three people here? Stuck at second base in perpetuity through your adulthood? One empathizes.

[sensive]

[ a choking sort of cough, muffled by his hand. ]

We don't have to put numbers on stuff. Like, high school. [ not that he, a dropout, would know anymore than she would. ] Wait, have you already kissed three people here? [ damn girl!! ] Whoa, Ava. Maybe you're the popular one.

[ he blew embry and cried a lot and got to kiss yelena once by the duck pond in his first five weeks, just for comparison's sake. ]

[unfazeable]

I wasn't— [—she was. he's right. she was putting numbers on stuff. regrets everywhere for those with human auction experience to see. abruptly, ava can't quite meet his eye.]

—I'm not. This is a weird house, that's all. Weird people.

[sensive]

[ softer, enough that only she can hear him. ] Yeah, it is. Should have seen me my first month.

[ screaming, crying, throwing up. ]

Sorry you ended up in the incinerator with us again. [ nudging his beer toward her. ] At least the food and drink’s free, right?

[unfazeable]

[his beer is easier to look at than his face. ava goes for it. doesn't drink like, a ridiculous amount of it, but there's a good inch of froth and liquid missing by the time she puts the pint down again.]

Not to be an asshole about it, but I never was one for money problems. Everything was either going to cost twenty million dollars, [and had to be stolen from some high security institution or criminal enterprise or others,] or was well in the budget. [pause.]

Not your fault. You're one of those people apologizes too much, aren't you?

[sensive]

[ with a look on his face that says he’d like to apologise again, ]

You know, I have, uh, heard that. [ he brushes a knuckle along the ridge of his nose. then, a slight smile. ] Also, that is kind of an asshole thing to say. I wasn’t doing so good before the oven, obviously.

[ people who are doing good do not get thrown out with the garbage. ]

[unfazeable]

I figured.

[being called an asshole puts a smile back on her face. a small one. easier to be that than—whatever role she played, on that stage. off the stage.]

How long have you been stuck here, with the rest of your Avengers?

[sensive]

I guess like over four months now? Which is a little crazy. [ very crazy, but bob has a talent for understatement. ]

The first two we spent in a cult in the woods where I was. [ eyes out-of-focus, drifting somewhere else on the table. ] All the newbies like me had these collars on the, uh, whole time. It sucked — but. Y’know. Bucky and Yelena were already here, so. They kind of protected me. [ quieter, ] Most people here were jerks about it.

[ so when ava says popular, he thinks about that. all the people who were happy to have him under their boot. who didn’t like it so much when he stood up, after the games started. ]

[unfazeable]

[she should feel bad. she does feel bad.

she is not soulless. she couldn't have imagined that because she isn't one, lacks the sadism of imagination. ava starr isn't the one who goes around charring people in a huge box. (she's the one who goes back for them, actually, but that's neither here nor there.)]

They still like that? Jerks to you, I mean. [she's worried. for the moment, not about herself.]

[sensive]

[ some of them are, he thinks, in big ways and small. (small, like calling him a sad dog, or like saying he should get over everything that happened in the commune because it didn’t count. didn’t matter. maybe some things don’t, when done to guys like him.) ]

Not — not really. [ their eyes meet, and it feels a little like when yelena first looked at him in the vault, having she decided there was something worth protecting, where no one had before. he ducks his head to break the contact. ] It’d be hard to pull off now, with Yelena and Ani around.

[ technically, bob is ani’s bodyguard, but she’s come to his defence more often and more fiercely than he’s managed for her thus far. and yelena is yelena. what’s the power of one million suns, compared to her? ]

[ trying for levity, ] Unless you have a death wish.

[unfazeable]

[one must keep in mind that bob theoretically has the power to manipulate reality and beat up all the avengers by his blond lonesome. but that 'one' is not ava starr. lost in time. listening to romantic tragedies from across a gaming table, middle of a restaurant.]

Sounds like some of these people do. But I wouldn't fuck with Yelena, myself. I mean. [her face crinkles with humor, a bit. easy to figure, bob does fuck with yelena.]

Don't remember an Avenger named 'Annie.'

[sensive]

[ no need to acknowledge that first part, when ava’s right. ]

[ adoring, ] She’s not an Avenger, but you don’t have to be, I mean, to be a hero.

[ he lifts his pint in her general direction: five foot nothing, all hair tinsel and razored nails. a pocket rocket, laying into one guy or another in a thick brooklyn accent. ]

She helped protect me during the murder mystery game, even when Stephen accused me of being one of the killers with, like, a lot of evidence. [ in answer to whatever look ava surely throws his way for that tidbit. ] I know. [ it was a weird time. ] And she took out the guy who was orchestrating the cult. [ with a shrug, ] One of the best people here, no question.

[ aaaand that’s enough sharing to warrant a generous swig. ]

[unfazeable]

[the look lingers after 'i know.' this soon on the heels her last faux pas, and so close to bob's carnivorous ladies of vigilant grace, it seems exceptionally shitty to ask, so—]

He was wrong, obviously. Or you woke up with a bloody knife in your hand, blade an exact match for the wounds, and only the ladies knew that's just Bob in the morning.

[pause. a look at his beer. she is still processing the possibility—inevitability—that he's more than he looks like.] Don't answer. I'm sure it can wait. Not something that happens every four months, is it?

[sensive]

[ don’t answer, she says, and his mouth quirks, pleased to be normal a little longer (and to think that when he stops being that way, it might be explained in his own words this time). ]

You get it. [ women are right about everything. ] Every twelve, actually. They get really into Halloween Horror Nights here.

[ but they’ll figure their way out by then, right? ]

[unfazeable]

[another one of those american young adult and/or family experiences ava didn't have, that it wouldn't have killed her to miss out on, really.]

Nine months feels like a long time to wait for some bullshit. Suppose that's what mums say, too. That the worst thing that happens here, far as you know?